Vienna, Austria

We have been in Austria for a couple of days now. We showed up Thursday night (after Mauthausen) and took a quick tour of the city. Friday, we visited two piano companies: Bosendorfer and Joseph Broden (interesting story between those two companies). Today, we toured. We visited Hofburg palace where the emperor lived in the city, and Schoenbrunn Palace, where the Empress spent most of her time (when not in the city). Finally, tonight we attended a Mozart concert.

Bosendorfer is the top elite piano maker. Their pianos run anywhere from 60,000 Euros to 140,000 Euros (140,000 is about $180,000 depending on the exchange rate). There high-end (shown below) has an additional 10 keys on the bass side. When they hit those keys hard, it just rumbles… They keep those extra keys black so as not to confuse anyone use to the normal 88. Additionally, the pianos are all hand made and take about 7 years to build. Anyway, they also have an amazing recording facility that allows them to record, playback, etc. So they played back something that was stored several years ago and it sounded just like it was being played. Evidently they have some of the best granularity available. The midi format (which is normal) doesn’t allow for the detail they use, so they have their own format. Here are the piano keys…

Next we went to Broden, which was basically a piano company that we started by some of the executives of Bosendorfer when they had some difference of opinions. Their difference is that they wanted to go for cheaper pianos so that more people would be willing to buy them, especially with the economy we are in now. The main difference is that they outsource some of the piano parts to other countries. In particular, pieces that aren’t critical to the piano sound. They are also expanding into other areas of music, again as a method of diversifying some of their product lines. In particular, they are selling high end speakers that sound amazing.

One totally random occurance happened at Broden. As we arrived, someone was there that I recognized. Turns out John Anderson, someone I knew from Bellevue, Washington, was there visiting piano places with a friend of his. We talked a bit. He is now a lawyer in Salt Lake City. Ran into him again later that day in our hotel. Turns out that’s where he was staying for a day. Small world…

Last night, we toured the city here. One of the challenges right now is that many of the monuments and stops that you would normally make are under renovations. This is not the high tourist season, so they are making use of the time to fix things up. We saw that Neuschwanstein Castle, and now here in Vienna as well. One interesting twist here is that they put up cloth on the scaffolding that looks like the building. So even though you aren’t seeing the real building, you see what it might look like. That being the case, I didn’t take many pictures around Vienna, but here are a couple.

This is the back of the main chapel in Vienna. Very pretty (at least according to the cloth that is up). We can see the steeple, but I didn’t get a good shot of that. Here is a shot from the back side.

When we were at Hofburg palace doing some touring, we finished at twilight. From there you can see the Vienna Town Hall lit up.

 

As we went around and did our official touring last night, we did stop and talk about this building, but I was too busy looking at the statues here to hear what was said… Sorry about that. But you will notice the four lower statues represent 4 of the tasks set for Hercules: kill the hydra, take the belt of the Amazon queen, one I couldn’t recognize, and kill Cybrus (or at least do something with him… Can’t remember). Pretty cool.

The big treat of the touring was today, Schoenbrunn Palace. It was amazing in size, beauty, etc. Here is the outside (front first, then back).

 

That back facing one was taken from the triumphal arch in the “backyard.” Here is the reverse view.

There were several fountains, all of which were amazing. You see one of them in the picture above representing Posidean and his court. I have a closer shot in my photo album… Here is one of the other fountains on the grounds.

One other interesting item here. As you walk up to the arch, there are several paths you can take. Many of them go up through the trees that you see off to the sides. If you go in there, you will find several types of birds and squirrels. They are all very use to humans and at least the squirrels will come up to you if you put an acorn in your hand. I took a shot of one that I was able to get come up to me.

Lastly, I have to say something about the concert. It was great. It was an hour and a half, but I didn’t even feel the time go by. When they finished, I thought they were having an intermission because I could have sworn we had only been there for a half hour or so. Of course, my family knows how bad I am at estimating… but it felt like I had only been there a short while. You know it is good if you don’t even know that time has gone by. They did do a piece that basically has a bird chirping that we have on a CD for children. I took a video of that so that my children can hear and see parts of that one. The percussionist really played up that part and had fun.

With each country, I try and have one meal that is pretty authentic. For Austria, it was a weinerschetzel. I am sure I messed up that spelling… Anyway, they had a place called Schnitzelwirt (Schnitzel World) that had several types on the menu. For a fairly low price, you get a huge amount of food. It was very good. I have found that I tend to skip at least one meal a day around here. After a big breakfast and one other mean, I don’t need much more. The food is great.

One last thing. The cold, wet weather we have been expecting this whole trip finally arrived. Unfortunately, it arrived while I was out in Vienna touring, and I hadn’t prepared. I took a picture which you can see below of the result. I borrowed an umbrella this morning and had to use it to get to a laundry mat, but after that, I haven’t had to use it. Now that I have the umbrella (borrowed from the hotel) I won’t need it any more… I untucked my shirt a bit so you could see the wet versus the dry.

Anyway, tomorrow, we go to church and then are on the bus to Prague. I won’t blog anything tomorrow, but hopefully I will be back on Monday.

Salzburg and Mauthausen

For the foreign business excursion, we each get a chance to add a journal entry to a group journal. It was my turn today. So I wrote there. Rather than write a second big description of what we did today, I will use that entry here. Of course, I will add pictures…

When I saw this was my day, I felt very humbled at the responsibility. Today we visited Salzburg and Mauthausen. It has seemed daunting to have to describe a place from where so much beauty has originated to where so much horror and human depravity occurred.

We left Munich at 7:30. It was about a two hour ride to Salzburg. During the trip we watched "The Sound of Music." Seemed appropriate. We stopped the movie at the intermission point, right after Maria had left. We headed into Salzburg after having seen its beauty and happiness, at least as portrayed in the film.

While there, we visited many of the places from the film: the "Do, re, me" steps as we called them (the steps in the movie where the children were learning to sing),

the theatre where they sang (though we didn’t go in),

the cemetary they hid in at the end of the film,

and (from afar) the fortress that contains the abbey where Maria was.

Additionally, we saw a couple of places Mozart lived (including where he was born),

 

one of the oldest inns in Europe (established 803 or so, no picture…), the Danube river,

and Marabelle Garden.

A couple of notes:

• You can buy a fairly inexpensive music box that plays Adelweiss.
• The hot dog stands have a hot dog they say is spicy. It’s not super spicy, but it is very good. Several of us had a couple.
• There is a boat that is a restaurant. We didn’t go there, but we saw a boat attached to the restaurant that basically spins around several times. Again, no one went on it, but we watched it. I would assume eating should be done after the ride if you do go on it.
• There was also a shop called Fürst that sells a truffle-like chocolate, MozartKugel. Basically a chocolate ball filled with nugget and marzipan. Fürst sells a hand made one that is supposedly the first one. Expect to pay just under a Euro.
• They also have several types of giant pretzels. I had one for lunch…

As we left, we were able to see the church where the wedding in the movie was filmed. We didn’t have time to stop by. Along the way, we finished the movie. Again very appropriate as the von Trapp family fled to escape the Nazis. I have to admit I teared up a couple of times during the movie. I think partly because music gets to me. I think also because where we were heading made the story so real.

We made it to Mauthausen mid-afternoon. We started the tour with a film. Most of it was photos and interviews. One of the points made was that when the third riech began taking power, they tried to remove the "destroyers" of culture and build up the "creators." Being that they were the ruling power, the "destroyers" were any person who didn’t follow their beliefs. During the initial period, many great thinkers, scientists, etc, fled. They mention a few, but I only remember Sigmund Freud. Obviously others, such as the von Trapp family, saw what was coming and fled as well.

The film ended with a testimony from an American that arrived during the opening/freeing of people at the camp. He had a difficult time describing his experience. In particular, burying thousands of dead that looked like skeletons rather than bodies. Lastly, they showed a film taken by a US GI during those initial days of the rescue. You get a glimpse of the condition of those at the camp. However, even that can never help us know what they experienced.

I don’t want to go into too much detail. There is plenty on the internet. However, I did see the gas chambers. I did see the crematories. I did see where they slept. Most importantly, I did see many of the names and photos of those that were killed in that camp.

There are times when, as I read the Book of Mormon, I come to stories that seem too horrible to be real. And yet they happen. Even today, we hear of genocide and wars based on beliefs. How can mankind have such incredible potential for evil? How can a generation of youth be taught by their fathers that those things are right? We all have the light of Christ within us, and yet there are those that learn to ignore it.

As with each of these camps, the prisoners were used as expendable labor for some purpose. Mauthausen was a stone quarry. Each day, they would walk down into the quarry, pick up a block that easily must have been more than 50 pounds and then carry it up. Then do it again. The film at the beginning of the tour said there were times when someone would stumble and fall. With the number of prisoners on the steps at once, if anyone fell, it was like dominos all the way down.

Here are rocks of about the size they had to lift.

While nothing I could do would change their suffering, I decided to take my own trek, as it were. There were several monuments at the top that were surrounded with stones. I realized what people had done. So I walked down into the quarry and picked up a couple of stones. Then I walked up the 186 uneven and narrow steps (called the Death Steps) and the additional half mile of poorly placed and uneven stones and left my two stones at one of the monuments.

 

It was obviously nothing close to the real experience. I was dressed in comfortable clothes and running shoes, rather than convicts clothes and poor or wooden shoes. There has never been a day in my life where I could say I have experienced real hunger. Many of them died from malnutrition. I go up and down stairs to get exercise. They did it to stay alive. I carried stones that I could fit in my hands and still take pictures. They carried stones so heavy that it would crush them if they dropped it. I have always had people around me who love and support me. They had people who laughed when they stumbled, beat them on a whim and killed them when sick.

Yet their suffering is a little more real to me now.

Munich, Germany

Today, we had two items planned: visit BMW, and visit the tourist sites of Munich. We leave Munich tomorrow, so we only had one chance. Anyway, we did both. First, here are a couple of pictures of BMW. The first is corporate headquarters, and the second is BMW World (basically a big showroom).

They took us through the factory and showed us the assembly of several cars. They have some amazing robots. Most of the factory is automated and it looked like something out of StarWars or Transformers. Anyway, very cool. On the way out, we all decided to sit in one of the cars and get a picture. I got in the 35i (I think…). Here is the shot.

As a side note, I briefly fell asleep during the presentation… Dr Swenson played the telephone game to get one of my neighbors to wake me up before anyone noticed. Unfortunately, since they passed the message around the room, the only person that didn’t notice (and I am not sure if he didn’t) was the presenter. Everybody rode me on that one. Not sure I will live that one down for a while.

Before we started touring, we did stop at the Olympic park. Both to tour as well as to get something to eat. Just two pictures here (I took more, but didn’t like them, so deleted them).

Next, we visited Nymphenburg, a castle/estate in Munich. Basically, it was the home of several dukes that just kept adding on with each reign. Very impressive. I have a video showing the full 360, but I am only including a couple of pictures here (as always, just check the photo albums for other photos). The last one just shows how much farther the estate goes. We didn’t have much time here, otherwise I would have gone out back. I might be able to get a couple of photos from other people that did go back, but I didn’t.

We then went into Munich proper. This is the first really big city we have visited. The biggest thing I noticed is how old it is. At one point, I was up on top of a tower and must have counted 14 old churches, as well as dozens of other older structures. Many of them were being renovated, but they were there. I just get the sense of how young the United States really are.

There first couple of pictures are the glockenspiel in Mary’s square. Mary is the patron saint of Munich and this court was built in her honor. The glockenspiel has a clarrion that rings several times a day. I got a video of it going at one point. Anyway, three portions of it move. The lower portion is basically a dance that is celebrating Mary having removed the black plague from Munich. Here are a couple of photos, the last being a view from St Peter’s tower next door.

Just one more picture to add…

That’s right. This garbage truck is Mercedez-Benz. While Mercedez-Benz does high end cars, in Europe, they are also known for their trucks. We have seen big trucks, dump trucks, buses and garbage trucks all with that logo. Knowing that we only see the car side of their business in the US, this just blew me away.

Until tomorrow. We are visiting Salsburg and a concentration camp tomorrow on our way to Austria. I am sure I will have more pictures for tomorrow. I will dedicate the Salsburg ones to Elizabeth… 🙂

Neuschwanstein Castle

We had a long day today. We were up at 5:30 to shower and eat so that we could be on our way by 6:45. The plan was to leave Switzerland today and go to Germany. Really quick note on that. I called my mom last night. She was in the French areas, so I wasn’t in any area she knew. Ah well. Anyway, once in Germany we would visit Rational (Rational website). Along the way, though, we stopped off the visit the Neuschwanstein Castle. Supposedly, this was the castle that Disney used to model or draw inspiration from Cinderella’s castle. It was amazing.

First, there are three items of interest there: the main castle (Neuschwanstein), King Ludwig’s father’s castle (Hohenschwagau), and Queen Mary’s bridge. When we pulled into the parking lot, Hohenschwagau is most visible. The first picture is from the parking lot and the second is taken from a view up in Neuschwanstein castle.

 

It is pretty impressive, especially since this was a secondary structure here.

From there, we took a path up. The path was steep and about a mile long. It was hot. Anyone who knows me knows that meant I was going to end up sweating no matter what I did. Once we got to the top, there was a path that went to left and right. If we went left, it would go to the courtyard (which is where we needed to go in order to take the tour). We had about 30 minutes at that point, so I went to the right with a couple of other people. That path was suppose to lead to Queen Mary’s bridge which was suppose to give a great view of the castle. The signs were all in German, so we weren’t sure of the path once we were on the trail up. Two of us took turns running up different trails to get the right one. I ran up the second path (which was the correct one) but it was pretty long. I was dying by the time I got to the top. Here are a couple of photos. First two are views from the bridge down. The next is a view of the main castle from the bridge (notice that they were renovating… I don’t think I would have made the trip up if I had known that…). The fourth is the view of the bridge from the castle.

 

It was a pain, but it was a good hike. I hit my hour workout today with that hike as well as the walks through the castle. Here is a view of what I looked like just before going into the castle. You have to view the picture by zooming in, but when you do , you will see the sweat…

Now that you have seen that, let me add a couple of my favorite shots of the castle.

 

It was great. I have added all the pictures I have to the photo album. They wouldn’t let us take pictures inside the castle, so I don’t have anything on the inside, but it was amazing. I understand some people took some video inside, though. I might try and get a link.

After this, we got back on the bus and headed to Rational. They gave us a tour and then did a full dinner for us as a demo. Again, very incredible. Perfectly cooked pizza, fish, roast beef, potatoes, croutons, and chicken. All perfectly cooked and just right. The oven would be fun to own, but first, they are only targeting commercial customers. Second, their low end runs around $9500. Not for the faint of heart or pocket.

One last note, I have 20 pages left in Les Miserables. I am reading it in preparation for London where we will see it. I am very excited to see it!

Just finished… I think that was the longest book I have ever read.

Zai and Partners Group

 

Today we did our first official visits. The first was Zai (http://www.zai.ch/). They make high end skis. Just to get the range, their low end skis start at 2000 francs (just under $2000) and go up to 8500 francs. Their skis are mostly handmade and built out of some unique materials. They are a small shop and excel and building unique skis that are very customized. They don’t care as much about quick turn around processes, but rather focus on quality of material and skis. Their biggest sponsor is Antonio Banderas who happens to be an avid skier. He owns three pairs of Zai skis. Evidently his quote is "I use to ski. Now with Zai, I fly." They took us in an walked us through the process of creating a pair of skis. One of the things they do is bring in their customers to help in the building process. How cool is that to be able to say you built your skis? I did ask about snowboards. While they don’t have them now, they might in the future. Snowboards are such a different class of clientele… Anyway, here is a shot of a rack of skis.

 

 

 

In the stack on the far left, you can just see an all black ski. It was made in partnership with a watch company, Hublot (http://www.hublot.com). These are the high end skis. They are made with a stone core rather than wood for greater dampening. The top is also rubber that smells like vanilla (just like the watches). Anyway, so pretty neat stuff. Since they are such a small company, they have been able to try out several cutting edge designs (pun intented). Anyway, the view outside was amazing. I didn’t include a photo, but I did get a couple of videos showing the panorama.

 

Next, we left for Partners Group. On the way, we stopped for lunch. Here is the view from our pit stop.

 

 

Next, we went onto the Partners Group (http://www.partnersgroup.net). They are an alternative investments group. As we talked with some of the people in the company, one thing came out clearly. They have a passion for what they are doing. They also believe that work life balance means that you love the work so much that work is a part of your life. That can sound bad in some industries, but I understand that for a consulting/finance type company, this rings true. That said, they do believe in families and enjoying time off. All in all, another great visit.

 

Here we are coming out after our visit.

 

 

As today is our last day in Switzerland (we head towards Germany tomorrow) I needed to spend my last 12 francs. I told my wife I would pick up some chocolates, so I have a few that I will be bringing home. Just hope they can stand the heat. Once again, today was hotter than expected. It has beein in the 80s for the last couple of days. Most of what I packed was long sleeves and pants… Fortunately, I do have one pair of shorts and a couple of t-shirts that I had planned on working out in… Ah well. Anyway, as I was saying, I picked up some chocolates. They are everywhere here. I have added a photo of one of the many chocolate shops here. This one was just under the train station that neighbored our hotel.

 

 

Well, time to head to bed. Getting late and we are getting up early tomorrow. Bus leaves at 6:45…

 

‘Night.

Touring Lucerne

This afternoon, our tour guide took us on a walking tour of the city. There were some very interesting items he told us and showed us. For example, it was a very common practice to paint something on the sides of houses. I have included some of the more interesting ones here (see the gallery for others):

 

 

 

 

I have also included a more modern version that we saw…

 

 

Obviously I am joking. This was sad to see, though. From what I have seen, Switzerland tends to be incredibly clean for a city, but there are still instances of graffeti here and there.

 

Here is one that I cannot believe. They have biking lanes in the middle of the street. I took this shot with my friend Sean Flynn so the bicyclist wouldn’t know they were the real target of the shot. (Click on the photo for a larger picture if you don’t see the bicyclist)

 

 

The red lane is for bicycles and there are lanes on both sides. In some of the busier sections of the city, there are four bike lanes. One on each side of the road, and one between lanes of traffic (four lanes total, two going each way, bike lane in between these lanes). Not sure how the logic works there, but the bicycles take up that lane without any concern. I thought I had it bad in Duvall during the ride home on Novelty hill or across the old bridge…

 

We visited the Lion monument. The sculptor of the lion was Thorvaldsen, the same sculptor who did the Christus. This lion was done in tribute to the last war where a foreign country invaded Switzerland. The story is told of some groups who would defend castles, even when their sovreign wasn’t present to the death. The lion is dead in the picture (notice the bone or spear sticking out of its side). The symbolism was that Switzerland was courageous and would defend unto the death. Along the top, you see the words Helvetiorum Fidei ac Virtuti ("To the loyalty and bravery of the Swiss"), which they were known for. This is why they were chosen for the papel guard, because they could be counted on. You can find more info in wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Monument). I have included a far shot, as well as one that shows the words shown here:

 

 

 

We also visited the local Cathedral. The best part? It was air conditioned. So far, it has been unseasonably hot and we haven’t been expecting it. Most of us brought long sleeves, etc. Anyway, here are a couple of shots.

 

Here is a shot of the front doors. Very ornate and incredibly detailed…

 

 

Here is a shot of the interior.

 

 

And of course an outside shot.

 

 

Finally, we took a tour of the Lucerne wall. Evidently, when the town was younger, it started as a fortress surrounded by a wall and watchtowers. As the town grew and as wars became less frequent, they began expanding outside of the walls. This wall is now in the middle of the greater Lucerne area. Here are a few:

 

Here is one of the views from the guard tower we climbed.

 

 

Here is a view of four of the eight guard towers, as well as a portion of the wall.

 

 

Here is a view from the base of the wall.

 

 

Lastly, a view from atop the wall. You can see several of the murder holes along the top.

 

 

One last funny thing we saw once we came off the wall. There were several sections of the wall that were under construction. There was one part that needed some re-enforcing while the work was being done. As you can see, basically, a couple of sticks were used. Not sure how effective they could be…

 

 

There were several other pictures I took. I have uploaded them into a Lucerne photo album. If you would like to see more, please feel free to look there.

 

Church and Travel

We had church this morning in the bar of our hotel. Being the time of day, there was no one around. We had previously made these arrangements, so the room was setup with chairs, etc. It was nice. A couple of people commented that the room looked much like we see in pictures dealing with the day the church was organized. I didn’t think about taking pictures there, but a few others did. As soon as I can get them to forward those on, I will add them here.

 

We had a couple of talks as well as a musical number (men’s quartet singing "I Need Thee Every Hour" with me doing first tenor). It was an incredible experience. It was interesting to find that several people had connections to Switzerland. The wife of one of our professors (Prof Swenson) served her mission in Lucerne (which is where I am now). My mother also served here, though I don’t know where. I should have spoken to her before I left. I wonder if Prof Swenson’s wife and my mother knew each other… They might be near the same age, but hitting a 2 year block is still pretty tough.

 

When church was over, we traveled to our next destination (Lucerne) but made a couple of quick stops along the way. First stop was Interlaken (meaning between lakes). There were a couple of old churches there that we visited. One had some amazing stained glass. I took some shots of the outside, but wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to take shots inside, so I don’t have pictures of the stained glass. It had pictures of Adam and Eve being cast out, John receiving the vision of the Book of Revelation, Christ being baptized, and the birth of Christ. It will probably come to me after I publish this… There were some others, but they were closing the church and so we didn’t get to see them. Here is the outside.

 

 

While we were here, we also watched some tandem paragliders. We spoke with a couple of the operators. The low end was 160 francs, up to 280 francs. The high end started on a mountain nearby about 10,000 feet up. They called it the James Bond experience.

 

Here are a couple of shots from the field in Lucerne. Here is a close up:

 

 

And here is the view from afar.

 

 

This afternoon, we will tour Lucerne a bit. I will add some photos when we are done.

Travel and Switzerland

As a part of the EMBA program that I am finishing this year (yeah!!!) I have a foriegn business excursion. For my trip, we are hitting Europe: Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic and England. We started our trip today… or was it yesterday? I know we started on a plane at 8:30am on Friday morning and we arrived in Switzerland today at 7am. That was a long trip and I am not sure how I will handle the jet lag. I tried staying up most of the night before the trip and then sleep most of the trip over the Atlantic. I always discount the fact, though, that I can’t sleep while traveling. Ah well. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. I am still pretty tired.

 

Well, as for today, we have already visited the Swiss Temple (I’ve added the group picture)

 

One of our next stops was Kleine Scheidegg. Basically, a high mountain pass in the Alps. The shack on the right is the lookout tower that gives you a view in both directions. The photo doesn’t do the size of the mountain in the background any justice….

 

 

In Kleine Scheidegg (basically a ski resort) there was a red cow outside one of the shops. No idea what it was, but many of us decided to take a photo around it…

 

 

This is (as per our tour guide) a Swiss traffic jam. All the roads around are fairly small and narrow and life is pretty casual. The larger cities have a 100k people or so, so there are not a whole lot of ways to cause a jam besides cattle.

 

 

This is the view from Grund (where we took the cogwheel train to Kleine Scheidegg). Pretty impressive.

 

 

And here is the bus that we ride around in. The yellow submarine… It is pretty nice as far as buses go.

 

 

Well, I am off to do some touring in Grindelwald. We (there are several of us contacting family and otherwise using computers) keep getting laughed at by people walking by in robes. It does seem a little funny that we go all the way to Switzerland to use our computers. But I will keep it to a minimum.

Computer Nerd?

I was just pondering what I should pontificate upon today and it hit me. Here I am claiming to be a computer nerd, and so far, I haven’t added anything that proves that I am truly a computer nerd. So here is my thought: it seems today’s computer nerds are a little more hip that they use to be. But maybe that is just wishful thinking on my part.

From the traditional side of a computer nerd, I own 40 or so technical books, and to my wife’s amazement, I actually do read some of them like I would a novel, from front to back. I built my home computer from scratch (by the way, www.NewEgg.com is a GREAT place to get awesome deals and their customer support is amazing). When I think about a game night with friends, I am not thinking about playing board games, but rather a LAN or XBox party. I actually know the color of the lightsaber that was developed that could cut the blades of all other light sabers (Yellow. The prototype was destroyed along with the plans since it was too dangerous). I think Microsoft is one of the greatest companies in the world (of course with some people, that might mean I am not a true nerd…). I have a 3-D puzzle of the Millenium Falcon in my office. I totally understand Jason from the FoxTrot comic (My favorite is a Halloween one where Jason cuts some numbers into a series of pumpkins lined on a fence, that end of saying "3.14156…"). Tragdor is one of my favorite dragons (see www.homestarrunner.com for more info). I even know a little l33t speak.

By the same token, I love mountain biking during the summer and snowboarding during the winter. I am not a big Star Trek fan (that would be blasphemy in some of the circles I walk…). My favorite movie is actually "Pride and Prejudice" done by A&E that is 6 hours long (don’t knock it until you try it). I didn’t meet my wife in a chat room. I have an XBox, but haven’t played on it since Christmas. I shower at least once a day. I don’t drink Jolt or any other caffeinated drink. My favorite sport is beach volleyball and wallyball (www.wallyball.com for rules). I have a life in the evening. I don’t believe having pirated software (or pirated music for that matter) is right or legal. I love a good Ceaser salad almost as much as McDonald’s french fries. I do stay up past midnight more often than not, but it is because I am talking with my wife about life, the latest havoc our two year old has caused, or the price of homes in our neighborhood (crazy, btw). I use napkins to wipe my face, rather than my shirt. Finally, even though I have been a software engineer for 9 or so years, I didn’t own a computer until 2 years ago (I did have access at home, but it was usually a work computer).

So am I computer nerd? I guess the jury will be out on that one for a long time. But in the end, for some reason, I like the title, so I keep it.

Governing Principles

Something happened to me the other day that remined me of the governing principles. If you don’t know what I am talking about, the movie "A Beautiful Mind" was about a man who had this idea of governing principles. He stumbled upon it when faced with the dating situation. In the end, the idea is that if everybody did what would be best for the whole, everybody would come out better.

So where did this come up? In traffic. On my commute, there are a couple of stretches of road where a one lane road becomes a two lane for a brief stretch of time, then return to just one lane. Everybody who commutes knows that the lane will merge back to one lane, yet invariably there will be someone who decides they want to take the opportunity to get ahead. So they floor it and usually save themselves a good 15 seconds overall.

When people try and cut ahead like that, it disrupts the flow of traffic. How many times have you seen someone try that manuever and the people they cut in front of have to hit their breaks? I would bet it is a high percentage. Then all those people breaking just ripples down the line. There are exceptions, of course. If someone is driving 10 miles below the speed limit I will pass them just as soon as I can. But the rule is that we should wait. I am sure that those who stay in line are in just as much as a hurry as that person speeding buy, but the people in line choose to be polite.

Besides all this keeping the flow of traffic, etc, there is a bigger issue here. When someone passes, do you feel a great and abiding love for that person and wish them the best of luck getting to their final destination as expidiciously as possible? I thought not. We all wonder, sometimes, where road rage comes from. It is from selfishness. A feeling of "I am ahead" or "I am going to get there first." If we could all turn toward polite manners during our traffice, the whole commute group would benefit from it.